The University of Bristol has received two 2008 Hewlett-Packard Labs
Innovation Research Awards. The winning proposals, from the university's
Department of Computer Science and Department of Physics, were chosen from
450 applications. The awards will enable the recipients to collaborate
with HP Labs on a variety of high-impact research areas, including
information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation,
intelligent infrastructure, and sustainability. Award recipient and
computer science lecturer Walterio Mayol-Cuevas will lead a project to
develop novel computer vision methods that could lead to camera-enabled
devices that recognize and identify objects or places from how they look.
The research also could develop virtual post-it notes visible only to
selected people. Award recipient and professor of physics Robert
Richardson will lead a project focusing on liquid crystal colloids with the
goal of developing new technologies for updateable physical display
surfaces to improve users' experience when interacting with the digital
world. "Having this research partnership with HP Labs will bring the
necessary focus and drive to make a positive contribution to augmented
reality, a field of computer research combining real-world and
computer-generated data," Mayol-Cuevas says. "It is a big challenge, as
with any other area of research, and we are looking forward to starting the
work."Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold Election Systems,
admitted that its machines have dropped votes, saying a programming error
caused hundreds of votes to be dropped in Ohio's March primary elections.
The votes were dropped as the machines' memory cards were uploaded to
vote-counting servers. Premier originally blamed the error on antivirus
software, but the company now admits that a logic error in the machines'
GEMS source code caused the miscount. "We now have reason to believe that
the logic error in the GEMS code can cause this event when no such
antivirus program is installed on the server," wrote Premier president Dave
Byrd in a letter to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. "We are
indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error."
Premier's Chris Riggall says the antivirus software could trigger the
error, but it is not the underlying problem, and Premier's earlier analysis
was incomplete. Premier also released a product advisory notice, warning
users of its electronic-voting machines running some versions of the GEMS
software and informing them on how to avoid vote loss. Riggall says
Premier has developed a fix for the logic error, which is now being tested.
Premier also has submitted a version of the GEMS software for federal
certification, but the new software will not be certified before the U.S.
elections in November.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Intel and Microsoft recently discussed their efforts to create a new
parallel programming model for future multicore processors in separate
presentations at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Microsoft
discussed its vision for adding new layers to its system software stack and
the point extensions it is adding to its .Net environment. Intel talked
about new planned extensions to the x86 instruction set and revealed
progress on Ct, extensions to the C++ language intended to support greater
parallelism. Microsoft Parallel Computing Initiative leader David Callahan
says the company hopes to use the parallel shift to enable advances in
computer interfaces. Callahan says the software used in tomorrow's systems
will be much more layered into separate elements, including new runtime
environments that sit in a user space below application libraries and above
hypervisors and the core operating system kernel. The runtime environments
will act as schedules and work cooperatively with hypervisors that map
virtual-to-physical resources and operating systems that manage access to
the physical hardware. The goal is to be better at handling the growing
number of competing requests in multicore environments. Microsoft will
make its runtime layer available to third parties, because it believes
there will be a need for many kinds of interoperable software abstractions
from different vendors to serve different application types. "There are a
deep set of changes before you can even get to rebuilding libraries and
rewriting apps," Callahan says.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

University of Washington (UW) engineers have developed MobileASL, software
that enables hearing-impaired users to use sign language over a mobile
phone. The research has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant
for a 20-person field project that will start next year in Seattle. The
project is the first time two-way, real-time video communication has been
demonstrated on cell phones in the United States. Currently, many
hearing-impaired people use text messages on mobile phones, but video is
faster and better at conveying emotion, says UW undergraduate student
Jessica DeWitt. Low data transmission rates on U.S. cellular networks,
combined with limited processing power on mobile devices, has prevented
real-time video transmission with enough frames per second to allow it to
be used to transmit sign language. However, even as faster networks become
more common in the U.S., there is still a need for sign language-capable
phones that can operate on slower networks as the faster systems are not
available everywhere. The MobileASL team tried several ways to display
comprehensible sign language on low-resolution video, finally discovering
that the most important part of the image to transmit in high resolution is
around the face. The software uses a video compression tool to stay within
data transmission limits, and transmits the person's face and hands in high
resolution while the background is kept in a lower resolution. The
researchers are now working on a feature that will know when people are
moving their hands, to identify when people are not signing to reduce
battery consumption and processing power.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

European researchers have developed ChangeMasters, business education
software that enables users to acquire real-life skills and experiences
through game playing. Colleges and companies believe that ChangeMasters
represents an emerging shift in business education toward realistic
computer games, because using the software gives students real-world
skills. The program focuses on change management, an aspect of modern
business that is critical to responding to dynamic markets, consumers,
competitors, and innovation. However, changing business practices and
procedures can be hard, which is why ChangeMasters aims to make the
transition easier by giving executives the real-life skills and realistic
project management experience. The program contains hundreds of parameters
to define the corporation and its people, as well as a project to define
the corporation's character, culture, formal and informal networks, and any
other element that composes the general dynamics of an organization. The
program also makes use of informal aspects of corporate life, such as water
cooler and coffee room politics and gossip, the psychological attitude of
individuals, and a general openness or resistance to change among different
groups. "Nobody wins, nobody manages a painless project," says INSEAD
professor Albert Angehrn, director of the Centre for Advanced Learning
Technologies in France. "The idea is for people to learn lessons and
acquire new skills before carrying out a task in a realistic scenario."Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Microsoft, and the
University of Washington are developing Vi-Fi, a community Wi-Fi system
that can be used in moving vehicles. The researchers discovered that
hiccups can occur in the Wi-Fi signal as a vehicle moves through a wireless
network, particularly when the vehicles move from the range of one wireless
base station to another. Vi-Fi allows computers and devices to take
advantage of multiple base stations at once to smooth the transition
between base stations. The researchers say the technique makes it
noticeably easier to perform tasks that require a steady Internet
connection, such as running interactive software applications or making
Internet voice calls. The researchers presented their findings at a
meeting of ACM's Special Internet Group on Data Communications. Using
Vi-Fi, a device or computer in a moving vehicle chooses one base station at
a time to act as an anchor, or primary reception point, but also allows
other base stations to act as auxiliaries. The key is an algorithm that
uses probabilistic reasoning to determine the chance that a packet received
by an auxiliary base station was not received by the anchor. The auxiliary
base station can then relay the packet to the anchor if needed. The system
also allows the auxiliary base station to relay a packet to a vehicle if
the algorithm determines that the packet sent by the anchor station was not
received.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Intel showcased a number of technologies in robotics, computing, and
communication at the Intel Developer Forum to highlight its progress toward
machine intelligence. Intel is exploring the concept of programmable
matter, or devices built out of minuscule programmable elements called
claytronics atoms (catoms) equipped with sensors, processors and
electromagnetic components that can control the distance between the
catoms. The result would be reconfigurable, shape-shifting products.
Meanwhile, University of California, Berkeley professor Jan Rabaey
presented a vision that radio devices will become smaller and increasingly
cognitive, or capable of automatically sensing the availability of
uncluttered radio spectrum and which communication protocols should be
employed at a given moment. Rabaey also foresees more collaborative radio
that can form into a mesh network that transmits data with greater speed,
quantity, efficiency, and reliability. Mike Garner with Intel's emerging
materials group said "tri-gate" technology that boosts processing speed and
circuitry density while consuming less electrical power will work to the
advantage of complimentary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS), and stated
that "we think CMOS will continue to be the workhorse for many years in the
future."Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Internet2 announced that it has partnered with the 100x100 Clean Slate
Project to create dedicated nationwide network facilities to enable
researchers to reexamine the basic infrastructure of the Internet. Using a
national testbed network designed by Rice University and Stanford
University, project researchers will develop new networking technologies to
address the Internet's current challenges, which include scalability,
security, and access. The National Science Foundation-funded 100x100 Clean
Slate Project is working with economists, security and networking experts,
network operators, and policy specialists to develop a network that goes
beyond the current Internet. Using technology trends and experiences from
the past 30 years, the researchers are trying to re-prioritize the
fundamental principles that underlie network design to create networks that
will be ubiquitous in scale, provide revolutionary amounts of bandwidth, be
economically self-sustaining, and resistant to attack. "The 100x100
Project strives to create technology that will make it viable for all 100
million homes in the U.S. to have at least 100 megabits per second of
connectivity," says Stanford University professor Nick McKeown, a
co-principal investigator for the 100x100 Project. McKeown says the
project has partnered with Internet2 to deploy a breakable nationwide
network testbed that will be used to test and validate many architectural
ideas. As part of the program, researchers have developed new programmable
hardware routers based on the Stanford University-developed NetFPGA
platform, which allows researchers to build working prototypes to
experiment with different types of routers, protocols, and methods for
better processing of packets and network routing.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Rhys Watkin of Roke Manor Research in Hampshire, U.K., and colleagues have
developed software that could one day be used by unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs) to identify upwards-moving thermal air currents in a bid to mimic
the strategies of glider pilots and thus prolong endurance capabilities and
save fuel. The software analyses video of the sky using an on-board
camera, searching for signs such as the gray dome-shaped clouds formed by
hot air that is rising rapidly, and combines the analysis with real-time
weather forecasts and computer simulations of local air flow to predict
further thermal currents. The software also has been fed data provided by
expert gliders on such things as the specific locations of thermal currents
during various weather conditions. Combined with GPS technology, the
system could enable a UAV to self-navigate through as many thermal currents
as possible. In the future, the software could be enhanced to provide
analysis of maps of an area and estimation of how well ground surfaces emit
heat, further adding to its ability to predict thermal currents. The
system has thus far only been tested to suggest a route for a glider to
follow but is being adapted for use in UAVs.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

ACM's recent SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles gave visitors a chance to
virtually explore an ant colony. Visitors wore stereo-vision glasses and
used a handheld controller to view and navigate an Atta texana colony from
the perspective of the ants. Leaf-cutting ants have very large colonies
underground. "Leaf-cutting ant nests can hold a three-story house--the
rural legend is that tractors can disappear into them," says Carol
LaFayette, who was involved in the Texas A&M project. Using
ground-penetrating radar to map an Atta colony, the team did not have to
displace a single ant. The map presents the tunnels, the fungus the ants
feed on, and soil surrounding the tunnels at different levels of density.
The researchers used the GPR radar to create a three-dimensional map of the
underground colony, incorporated the data into an immersive visualization
system that used software to add some textural details, and projected it
onto five screens arranged in a semicircle. Texas professor Frederic Parke
developed the visualization system using off-the-shelf hardware, and says
it cost only $30,000.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

ACM's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
(SIGKDD) is the host of the 14th annual KDD conference, which is scheduled
for Aug. 24-27 at the Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort in Henderson, Nev. At
the conference, data-mining researchers and practitioners will have an
opportunity to learn more about the latest developments in social networks,
text and graph mining, recommender systems, medical data mining, and visual
analytics. The lineup of speakers includes renowned experts such as
Stanford University's Trevor Hastie and Microsoft Research's Thore Graepel.
The conference also offers keynote presentations, oral paper
presentations, poster sessions, workshops, tutorials, panels, exhibits, and
demonstrations. Tutorial topics include the challenges of mining
moving-object data, predictive modeling for social networks, and
state-of-the-art methods of mining uncertain and probabilistic data. The
winners of the ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award and the KDD Dissertation Award,
a new honor that recognizes the best young Ph.D. student in the field, also
will be announced at the conference.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Existing technologies such as service-oriented architecture (SOA),
business-process management, and mobile systems are projected to merge with
component business applications and social networking into "IT everywhere,"
according to a Forrester Research report written by analyst Bobby Cameron.
He says IT is at the start of a "new 16-year cycle of innovation and growth
that follows the previous cycle of networked computing for enterprise
applications and the Internet." Among the new products and concepts
Cameron foresees are information workplace, in which information is
delivered through available technologies; master data management to enhance
the quality of data that businesses employ; and SOA-based dynamic business
applications and architectures that offer more flexibility and easier
adaptability than older technologies.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have used a novel
system based on molecules that can assemble themselves into precise
patterns to create a new way of surpassing size limitations in
semiconductors. Self-assembling molecular systems called block copolymers
have been known for many years, but the regular patterns they produced were
only well-ordered for very small areas. The MIT researchers found a way to
combine this self-assembly process with conventional lithographic
chip-making technology so that the lithographic patterns provide a set of
anchors to hold the structure in place. The self-assembling molecules fill
in the fine detail between the anchors. MIT professor Edwin L. Thomas says
that properly choosing the spatial distribution of the anchors to a desired
final structure makes it possible to consistently generate defect-free
polymer nanostructures. The molecules themselves are made from a pair of
polymer chains that are bonded together. The chains are chemically
different and do not mix, which means that when they are spread on a
surface they naturally separate and form an orderly array. Changing the
spacing of the anchors can control the size and spacing of the overall
pattern. The most immediate application for the new technique will improve
the storage capacity of magnetic storage systems such as hard disk drives
in computers. In the future, entire computer chips could be made using
this new technique.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

How people relate to machines could be revolutionized with the emergence
of haptic interfaces that give a tactile feel to digital objects, with
applications ranging from innovative touch screens to medical training to
driving simulators to product design to advanced robot exoskeletons. The
feel of real buttons is mimicked by Nokia's Haptikos touch screen handheld
Web browser demonstrator, which is equipped with vibration-generating
piezoelectric actuators. Immersion research chief Christophe Ramstein
believes Apple's iPhone handheld could play a crucial role in the
mainstream penetration of haptic technology. He says the repertoire of
haptic effects will be greatly widened over the next decade, noting that
"mechanical switches are one thing, but we can begin to think about more
sophisticated effects like adding vibrations to music as if you're at a
concert." UK Haptics' Virtual Veins system is a haptic simulator used to
train health workers in venepuncture techniques through the use of 3D
goggles, a PC, and a SensAble Technologies end-effector that facilitates
interaction with virtual objects. Another adaptation of SensAble
technology by UK Haptics involves haptic cow, horse, and cat simulators to
train surgeons at the Royal Veterinary Hospital. Meanwhile, Immersion is
working on wearable force-feedback technology that allows people to pick up
and handle virtual objects through muscular interfaces.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

Los Alamos National Laboratory computer scientist Sami Ayyorgun is
developing wireless sensor network technology that could lead to
improvements in a variety of fields. Engineers could wirelessly monitor
miles of gas and oil pipelines for ruptures, damage, and tampering; rescue
workers could detect signs of life in a collapsed building; and armed
forces could monitor a combat zone or international border with sensors
that could alert soldiers to intrusions or illicit traffic. "It's not easy
to envision the impacts that sensor networks will make, both socially and
economically," Ayyorgun says. "Like many other researchers, I think they
are likely to rival the impact that the Internet has made on our lives."
Ayyorgun has developed a new communication scheme and has demonstrated that
concurrent gains in many measures of performance are possible, including
connectivity, energy, delay, throughput, system longevity, coverage, and
security. Like cell phones, wireless sensor networks rely on small,
independently powered devices, known as motes, to communicate. However,
unlike cell phones, which relay their signal through a base station,
multihop sensor motes relay their signal through each other, transmitting
information through a series of hops from one mote to the next. By
eliminating the need to build a mesh of base stations, wireless sensor
networks can be tailored to unique circumstances and created for
significantly lower costs.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a long tradition
of investing in programs with potential for improving technology for
defense as well as commercial applications. IRobot's PackBot, a rugged,
portable robot capable of performing hazardous missions, started life as a
DARPA project, and iRobot has a contract with DARPA to design a soft robot
that can adjust its shape to squeeze through small openings using advances
in basic chemistry and materials science. The project will involve
collaboration with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Key to ensuring DARPA funding is clearly explaining how the
technology will help modern warfighters, and former DARPA program manager
Mark McHenry says project proposals can be assessed using a series of
questions designed to answer such things as what issues the new technology
will address and how it will address them better than current solutions.
"I would tell people, if you don't have a good answer for these questions,
if you can't tell them exactly what you'd do with the money, if you can't
tell them exactly why you'll be able to succeed where others failed, they
just won't fund you," he says. McHenry's company, Shared Spectrum, has a
contract with DARPA to devise technology for military radios to dynamically
access spectrum to set up and maintain communications, with the overarching
goal being a demonstration of the ability to access 10 times as much
spectrum with almost no setup time. DARPA work is often much more focused
than standard Defense Department initiatives, says George Stone of Alion
Science and Technology, which worked with other companies on DARPA's Real
Time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision Making project. "We use
simulations of enemy insurgent activities in urban environments and then
try to build models of how commanders might have a tool that would let them
predict where the enemy is and what they're doing," he says.Click Here to View Full Articleto the top